Note 48 — Chapter V

“The late ministry,” wrote Gunning after the fall of Bernstorff’s Government in 1770, “are said to have neglected no means of presenting all business to His Majesty’s youthful eye through the terrifying medium of labour and drudgery. They used many efforts (and at length they succeeded) to inspire him with a thorough distaste for everything but ease and dissipation, with the sole design of maintaining their own power and consequence. They equally diverted his application from civil or military business, the former with a view of managing it themselves, the latter in order to prevent any great exertion of the natural power of an arbitrary government, which without an army is a mere chimæra.” (Gunning’s despatch, Copenhagen, April 4, 1771.)